On Growing
by Coquelicots
Summary: Short drabbling paper on the subject.


_Short drabbling paper on the subject._

_Disclaimer. Peter Pan belongs legally to the Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children. I don't steal from children. Inspired also by the film 'Finding Neverland', which I don't own either._

_Please read. Please review._

On Growing

It starts off rather simple, really. It's Thursday and you know today Mother will let you have an extra slice of jam-on-rye and you're in quite a bit of a hurry to get to breakfast when you notice, quite suddenly, that the shoe you're trying to fit on really won't fit on at all and that the shirt you've pulled on today is just a mite too snug and will hardly reach your trousers.

Or perhaps when you go to step onto the 'bus, your nurse doesn't stoop down to give you a leg up and you can manage quite well by yourself, thank you very much.

It is the way with most, the body straightens itself out a mite quicker than the mind. This can lead to all sorts of difficulties; riding on your father's shoulders isn't nearly as fun when he can hardly lift you up there in the first place and has to set you down soon after anyway when his shoulders begin to ache; crawling into the cave by the fountain in the park was easier when your head didn't brush the ceiling and you didn't have to sit with your feet sticking out of the entrance.

It doesn't take long for the mind to catch up though, a week if you're lucky, a month if you're not. Darning socks after noon tea replaces watching grease bubbles slither down the drain as the maid scrubs dishes. The beetle collection in the kindling box on the mantle is removed in favor of Tolstoy and Dickens. It wasn't much of a contest, really.

And though you may still delight in blowing dust off butterfly wings and taking the steps two by two, you have always known the inevitable. Yet the child's mind can prove reluctant to surrender, more often than not, and it is not until That Moment when it can be smothered completely.

Most don't take note of it at all. Others do, but forget soon afterwards. Some recognize it in others, but he is unique, the one who can identify it in himself and recognize it as significant, as a change, as an end and as a beginning and as a something to which he can never return. Latin verbs and dancing lessons may have all been well and good at helping along now and again but it isn't until That Moment that anything of consequence takes place.

That Moment when a child checks her dress in the mirror one last time before her first dance.

That Moment when a child decides running away really isn't going to help anything at all and begins retracing his steps back home.

That Moment when a child stops to buy her younger sister a roll at a bakery when they've gotten separated from their nurse.

That Moment when a child pours his mother her medicine before gently kissing her feverish forehead.

It is That Moment, the moment when a child realizes he has a place, a purpose, that the world, from this moment on, is a different place because he is in it. It is the moment when a child understands that he affects not only himself, but all he encounters. And it is in That Moment when the entirety of his gaiety and innocence and heartlessness is lost forever.

And then, quite suddenly, everything is different.

Three lumps of sugar in your tea is an awful lot and hairpins are things you could probably get used to. The cave by the fountain is just a sewer drain and fourteen really isn't such a big number after all. The earth is round and nine times nine is eighty-one and the French word for water is _eau_.

Please's and thank you's slip out on their own and dogs can't really talk, didn't you know? The girl across the way with the red ribbons is pretty cute and Byron certainly has a way with words and did you catch that new play by Westly last week? Street performers can be ever so bothersome and the nurse you employ gets five shillings, eight pence a week.

Pirates all died long ago and what is all this foolishness of fairies?

Drinks are better without any ice.

Walking in the rain will give you such a chill.

To fly is such a ridiculous thing.

And you've growed.

July 2006


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